


Good At Loving You

by myrmidryad



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Domestic Bliss, Dominant Alex, Kink Negotiation, Light BDSM, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Nebulous well adjusted future, Praise Kink, Submissive Michael, the lightest of light
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-18
Updated: 2020-03-18
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:00:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23203606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myrmidryad/pseuds/myrmidryad
Summary: Michael couldn’t be entirely predicted, so sometimes Alex needed to stop overthinking and guessing at his responses and just ask. So: “Have you ever thought about kink?”Baby dom Alex and baby sub Michael, just trying out the gentlest of gentle scenes.
Relationships: Michael Guerin/Alex Manes
Comments: 42
Kudos: 207





	Good At Loving You

**Author's Note:**

> Michael just wants to be good for someone, and that's a fact. Shoutout to [Haloud](https://archiveofourown.org/users/haloud), [Ninwhimsy,](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninhursag), and [Lori Lane](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoriLane/pseuds/Lori%20Lane)/[Angsty Aliens](https://angsty-aliens.tumblr.com/) for discussion and agreement on these very important issues.
> 
> Title from [Good At Loving You](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2--Si10YSc) by Mother Mother.

The thing with Michael was that Alex could never entirely predict him. That wasn’t exactly a bad thing these days, when a surprise could be funny or pleasant instead of alarming or dangerous, but it still meant Alex knew when he’d reached the point of research oversaturation. At the point where he started assuming certain things would be a given and he was planning over a year in advance, he knew he needed to take it back a notch. Because with Michael, not as many things were a given as might have been expected.

Alex finally brought it up, literally months after he’d started thinking about it, on an ordinary night as he and Michael were getting ready for bed. He was sitting in the chair in the corner, taking off his prosthesis, and Michael was barefoot, just pulling off his t-shirt to dump in the hamper.

Michael couldn’t be entirely predicted, so sometimes Alex needed to stop overthinking and guessing at his responses and just ask. So: “Have you ever thought about kink?”

“Like, whips and chains excite me?” Michael smirked at him and balled his shirt up, tossing it into the hamper. “You wanna try that? We can try that.”

Alex fought to keep his smile from turning too fond. Sure, sometimes Michael was unpredictable. But sometimes he really wasn’t. “You’d wanna try it?”

“Sure.” Michael shrugged a shoulder and started unbuttoning his fly. “I’ll try anything, you know me. Pretty sure I’ve got some rope in the truck if you wanna start right now.” He arched an eyebrow, entirely too tempting, and Alex couldn’t hold back a grin.

“We should probably negotiate it first.”

“Negotiate? What is this, a business deal?” Michael pushed his jeans and underwear down, unselfconsciously naked in a way Alex had always loved.

“No, but that’s…kind of one of the main points, to agree on things beforehand.” He had yes/no/maybe lists printed and ready to go, but he didn’t want to bring them out right away. Michael knew he was a chronic overplanner, but there was no need to let on just how much planning he’d done for this. Not straight away, at least.

“Like what?” Michael chucked his underwear into the hamper (another perfect shot) and folded his jeans without looking away from Alex, stashing them in the closet. 

“Like…” He definitely didn’t want to go overboard, not this early. “Like what we want to do,” Alex settled on. “Specifics.”

“Like, what positions?” Michael raised an eyebrow and grabbed his pyjama pants from the end of the bed, stepping into them and still keeping his eyes on Alex.

Alex had stopped all motion just to watch him, and he looked down to ease his prosthesis off his stump. “Sure, and other stuff.”

“Kinda sounds…” Michael hesitated, and Alex looked up at him again. “I don’t know. Unspontaneous.”

Alex shrugged. “Sure. But that can be good too, sometimes.”

“So…what kind of other stuff then?”

Alex unrolled his liner and let Michael take it when he stepped closer to do so. “Thanks. Stuff like exactly what we want. Like…what’s allowed and what’s not.”

“Like what?” Michael went into their ensuite to wash out Alex’s liner, and Alex smiled, uncomplicated love swelling in his chest.

“Like I don’t want to call you names,” he said, and Michael leaned his head back around the door, eyebrows raised.

“Well honey, no one’s asking you to.”

“Shut up,” Alex snorted, and Michael grinned and went back to washing. “I mean it’s not a hard limit or anything, I’m not taking it off the table forever, but for right now, for whatever we plan on doing, I don’t want to call you names, and I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Okay.” Michael sounded torn between amusement and dubiousness, which made sense.

“Okay,” Alex echoed, pulling himself up and grabbing his crutch to follow Michael into the bathroom. “So, what about you?” He sat on the edge of the tub, stump extending over it, and turned on the water.

“What about me?”

Alex rolled his eyes, pumping some anti-bacterial soap into his hands and lathering them up. “Do you have any do’s and don’t’s?”

“Not really.” Michael shrugged, meeting his eyes in the mirror and setting the now clean liner aside. “I like everything.” He picked up his toothbrush, and they were quiet for a couple of minutes as Alex washed his stump and moisturised it, then stood up to brush his teeth as well.

He’d kind of suspected that, was the thing. Michael was primed to take rejection of any sort so hard, so what better way to avoid rejection than to agree to everything? It fit the pattern of what their relationship had been for years. And they both knew it had been a mess now – everything was clearer in hindsight. But that still left Alex stumbling over Michael’s poor boundaries from time to time. He’d agree to everything until he snapped, and by the time he snapped it was already way too late, and Alex had been trampling over him without necessarily realising it.

But they were better these days. Better at talking, better at taking care of each other and themselves.

Alex changed into his sleep shorts and followed Michael into bed. The light turned itself out as soon as he was under the covers – Michael’s telekinesis at work. “You don’t like everything,” Alex said quietly, picking up right where they’d left off.

“Hm? Oh, I don’t know.” Michael rolled onto his side to face him, smirk in his voice. “I like a lot of things.”

“Yeah, but not everything.” Alex hesitated. “If I did something you didn’t like, would you stop me?”

The silence dragged out for so long that Alex’s eyes started adjusting to the darkness. He closed them, pained. “Michael.”

“I wouldn’t…look, I wouldn’t _say_ it, probably, but I’d…y’know, I wouldn’t just lie back and take it.” Michael shifted uncomfortably. “And you wouldn’t do anything I didn’t like. You never do. You know me.”

“Yeah, but you know me too, and we still screw up sometimes.”

“Well I don’t even know what you’re asking for right now,” Michael said bluntly. “You’re tiptoeing around it. Negotiating for _what,_ Alex? What do you want to do?”

Alex rewound the conversation in his head and had to admit that he had kind of skated around it. He still wasn’t used to talking so brazenly about sex as Michael was, not if it wasn’t in the heat of the moment anyway. And for him it wasn’t so much specific acts he was interested in as much as the aspect of control. 

“Okay.” He took a deep breath and shifted closer, and Michael draped one arm over his side, a reassuring weight. “Okay, stop me if I’m wrong, but you’ve…you seem to prefer it when I’m leading, so to speak.”

“Sure.” It wasn’t something they’d really talked about before, outside of the occasional joke about Alex being bossy, but whatever they did, Alex did tend to take the reins. 

“So what if…” Alex paused, pressing one hand against Michael’s bare chest as he thought his words through. “What if what I wanted, hypothetically, was for you to do whatever I said?”

“Following orders?” Michael’s smirk was back, and Alex had to close his eyes again, mentally flinching back. This was a problem he’d foreseen. _Following orders,_ to him, was something tied up with his family and the military. Neither of which were things he wanted anywhere near his relationship with Michael, in the bedroom or otherwise.

“Mm. What if…” Alex rubbed his palm across Michael’s pec to his sternum, chest hair a welcome sensation against his skin. “What if it was something less intense than that?” he asked, a potential solution to the twinned problems of his desire to direct and Michael’s unwillingness to say no flickering to life in his mind.

Michael arched his back to push into Alex’s touch. “Like what?”

“Like, sort of a game. What if I lay you out and I only touched you where you asked me to?”

Michael’s hand on his back tightened for a second, and Alex started to smile. “Asked how?” Michael asked in a low voice, and Alex breathed out and lifted his hand away.

“Like if you said lips.” He brushed his fingertips over Michael’s lips and grinned when his mouth opened to try and catch them. “Yeah. Or if you said…neck.” He trailed his fingers down Michael’s chin to his throat, tapping against his Adam’s apple. “And you’d have to say things like harder, or softer, or faster.”

Michael’s throat bobbed under his hand as he swallowed. “If it’s a game,” he whispered. “Who wins?”

“We both do.” Alex wrapped his hand around the side of Michael’s neck, thumb rubbing against the stubble that went down his jaw. “But like, this is where the negotiating stuff would come in. If I said…if I made rules, you’d have to say yes or no to them before we actually did anything.”

“Rules like what?”

“Like…” Fuck, Alex was getting hard thinking about this now, but he kept his voice soft. “Like if I said you had to hold out as long as you could before asking me to touch your cock, and you had to, to ask before I’d let you come.” To beg, he meant, but he didn’t want to say that. Not yet.

Michael swallowed again, his hand on Alex’s back digging in a little. “What if I broke the rules?”

“How?”

“If I touched myself instead.”

“Then I’d stop you, or tell you to stop.” Alex twisted his other hand so it was pressed over Michael’s heart. “It only works if we both agree to it,” he said quietly. “We both play by the rules. You get to tell me to stop too, or if you want to stop playing and just go back to normal, we do that.”

“No consequences?”

“No consequences,” Alex said firmly. “Any consequences have to be pre-agreed. No sudden switching it up, no rule changes after we’ve started. And we can do it both ways round,” he added. “You can do it to me too.”

He could just about see the shapes of Michael’s eyebrows in the dim light as he raised them. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. If you want.”

Michael stroked his hand down to Alex’s hip and up again, slow and thoughtful. “I wouldn’t mind trying that, yeah. Do you want to do it that way round?”

“I think…it could maybe be useful.” Alex licked his lips. “It kind of works for both of us. You suck at saying no, and I suck at asking for what I want.”

“No you don’t,” Michael laughed.

“I do.” Alex pressed his thumb against the hard line of Michael’s jawbone. “I suck at _asking,_ out loud. I’ve been thinking about it – when was the last time one of us asked for something in bed instead of just kind of implying we wanted it, or moving into positions that implied it?” They knew each other’s tells inside out by now at least, but with so much of Alex’s research emphasising clear communication, it couldn’t hurt to get better at saying things instead of just doing them.

“Okay, point, I guess.” Michael drummed his fingers against Alex’s side. “You wanna do it now?”

Alex grinned. “Not to be like, the most boring person you know, but it’s already eleven, and we both have to be up early tomorrow.”

Michael groaned. “But now I’m all turned on!”

“Oh?” Alex let go of his neck and reached down to palm Michael through his pyjama pants. Already half-hard, he thickened quickly under Alex’s hand, and Michael thrust his hips into it with a little breathless sound. “So you are,” Alex murmured, like he wasn’t also getting harder by the second. “Which bit did you like the sound of best?”

“Uhngg.” Michael pushed into his hand again, but Alex moved with him, not letting him get any pressure.

“Which bit?” he asked, rubbing the length of Michael’s cock very gently through his pants. “Laying out and being the centre of attention?” He shifted closer and brushed their lips together, just teasing at a kiss. “Flipping it and getting to touch me at your leisure for once? Or knowing how much I’m gonna tease you?”

“Fuck,” Michael gasped, trying his best to press into Alex’s hand.

“Cause I will,” Alex breathed against his lips. “You’re gonna have to be so specific, you know. I’m going to make you ask for every single inch of skin against you.”

Michael groaned. “All of it, _fuck,_ Alex. How’re you so…ha!” He dropped his hand between Alex’s legs and grinned at feeling how hard Alex was, laughed at how Alex bucked into his grip too. “Knew it.”

“Fool’s bet,” Alex snorted, and kissed him properly. “You know I’m always into you.”

Michael’s answer was a pleased rumble, and when he pushed the covers back and twisted around to the side to pull Alex’s shorts down, Alex pulled at his leg and shuffled down the bed a bit. Michael grinned and flopped down on his side, head level with Alex’s thighs as Alex’s was level with his stomach. They hadn’t tried sixty-nineing for a while, but Michael was smart – it would be quick, and it would require no cleaning up.

Alex pushed Michael’s pants down and took him into his mouth with no warning, thrilling at the way Michael groaned for him. He’d never gotten entirely used to this angle, but hummed around Michael’s cock and sucked him slowly, only losing his focus for a second when Michael took him deep, right down the back of his throat. How he could do that every time, Alex had no idea.

It was messier than he’d expected, sloppier, louder, but so fucking good too. It was a challenge to maintain a level of concentration while Michael was swallowing around him, hot throat and wet mouth and big hands on Alex’s thighs and ass. He had to resort to using his tongue more than anything else – he had to focus to deepthroat at the best of times, and there was no way that was happening right now. But Michael liked it loose like this, and his thighs started trembling after only a couple of minutes.

Alex loved knowing his tells. 

Michael clearly had a goal in mind though, and he squeezed Alex’s ass, rubbing the flat of his tongue against his cock and dragging Alex’s orgasm out of him faster than he would’ve believed possible. He moaned around Michael’s cock, barely keeping enough presence of mind to keep his teeth from scraping against him. Michael came half a minute later, urged on by Alex’s tongue, and they both just lay there for a moment, getting their breaths back.

“When do you wanna do it then?” Michael asked eventually, like they hadn’t broken the conversation off at all. Alex grinned and kissed his thigh. 

“Tomorrow? Or the day after?”

“Sounds good.” Michael yawned, jaw popping, and sat up to lie down with his head on the pillow again. “Mmmm. We should do that every night.”

“Great idea.” Alex pulled his shorts back up and snuggled against Michael’s side, tiredness catching up with him in a wave. “Genius.”

“Mmhm, that’s me.”

“Yeah it is.” Alex rubbed his nose into Michael’s curls, breathing in deep and falling asleep easily.

“I feel like a pinned butterfly,” Michael said dryly, lying back on the bed.

“You’re not pinned,” Alex pointed out. He was sat on the end of the bed, and he twisted around to kneel up and then settle at Michael’s side, level with his hips. His prosthesis was off, and while Michael was naked, he was wearing his underwear and a soft t-shirt. 

“I could be,” Michael said suggestively, lifting his arms to cross his wrists above his head. Just seeing him like that sent a bolt of arousal through Alex’s core.

“Too late,” he said, keeping his voice even. “We already agreed on the rules, remember?”

“I feel like you should ring a bell or something,” Michael grinned. “Just to announce the official beginning of the scene.”

Alex broke into a surprised smile. “The scene?”

“What, you’re the only one who can do research?” Michael looked smug and cocksure as only he could, laid out buck naked with his wrists crossed demurely above his head. Alex loved him so much.

“You could’ve mentioned it before,” Alex said, still smiling, and Michael tipped his head, shrugging without shrugging.

“This way was funnier.”

“Hmph. Well.” Alex turned his smile sweet. “Consider the ‘scene’ begun. I’m not touching you till you tell me where, and how.”

“My chest,” Michael said immediately, and Alex could have kissed him for not hesitating at all. He put one hand over the centre of Michael’s chest at one, fingers splayed, pushing down just a little bit. Michael smiled, slow and pleased. “Both hands?”

Alex obeyed, shifting to press his left hand next to his right. He didn’t prompt, or move. He just waited, and felt Michael breathe under his palms.

“Neck?” Michael murmured, and Alex slid his right hand up to brush against the side of Michael’s neck, thumb settling below his jaw to feel the steady beat of his pulse. Michael looked at him, no longer smiling, eyes half-lidded. “Face?” He breathed out through his mouth as Alex drew his hand very lightly up to cover half his face. Not cupping his cheek the way he usually would, but gently holding his hand over it with the ball of his palm resting against Michael’s lips, thumb against the side of his nose, fingertips against his hairline. 

Michael ran his tongue along his lower lip, and usually, usually Alex would take that invitation at face value and slide his thumb or a finger in, but now he just watched and waited. And after a second, Michael smiled and murmured, “Lips?”

Alex didn’t want to do what Michael expected. He slid his whole hand down and pressed three fingertips over the seam of Michael’s mouth, not pressing in, and smiled when he felt Michael’s huff of laughter against them. It wasn’t unexpected at all when Michael’s tongue peeked out to taste Alex’s middle finger, just a brief wet press that made Alex smile again.

“You’re not meant to be touching me, remember?” 

Another little huff of laughter. “Yeah.” Michael closed his eyes for a second, maybe thinking, maybe content to just lie there with one of Alex’s hands on his chest, fingers barring his lips. “Your other hand,” he murmured, eyes still closed, lips moving against Alex’s skin. “Press down?”

Alex did, wondering whether he would be able to push the breath out of Michael completely. Not with one hand, sure, but with both? It wasn’t something that he’d really considered during his research, other than to mentally mark choking off as a solid and definite no in his head. But choking wasn’t the only way breathplay could be done.

Getting ahead of himself, as usual. He focused again, keeping up the pressure with his left hand while keeping the fingertips of his right feather-light against Michael’s lips. No prompting, he reminded himself, and waited while Michael breathed against and under him.

“Move your hand across to the middle?” Michael asked, eyes still closed. Alex did, keeping the pressure the same, and heat pooled in his gut when Michael arched his back into it, pushing back to feel Alex holding him down. Michael took a deep breath in and sighed it out. “Um…less…not so hard?”

Alex eased up a bit, and Michael took another deep breath, sucking his lower lip between his teeth before opening his eyes. “Both hands down?”

“Where to?” Alex asked softly, sliding his right hand down to Michael’s chest.

“My legs?”

Alex dragged both hands down to Michael’s knees and stopped, watching Michael watch him. His cock was filling slowly, but Alex ignored it. Michael licked his lips again and seemed to steel himself before saying, “Insides of my thighs.”

Alex smiled and stopped pressing down as he slid his hands between Michael’s legs, the hair there sparse and soft against his palms. Michael breathed out slowly, one of his hands twisting to hold onto his wrist, like he needed to be holding onto something. “Push them apart a bit?”

Spreading his legs. Alex watched Michael’s cock harden almost completely as he did it, and swallowed the urge to lean down and taste. It only worked if they both stuck to the rules, he reminded himself, and stayed still, hands on Michael’s inner thighs.

As a mechanism for slowing them both down, it was perfect. After a couple of minutes, it started to feel almost meditative, just moving his hands to the places Michael whispered. Knee, ankle, hip, stomach, chest, back up to Michael’s face, because Michael seemed to really like that, to have at least one of Alex’s hands on his face or neck or in his hair at all times. He stopped phrasing everything like a question too, relaxing into the knowledge that Alex was going to touch wherever he said to touch.

And it was fascinating, in a way, to watch Michael seem to realise for the first time that he liked certain things that Alex had always known he liked. Having his hair played with and pulled, for example. Michael sounded so hesitant when he asked Alex to pull at first, and then relaxed into it with a soft groan. He asked Alex to push down on his limbs and chest harder, harder, and then to stop and release him. He kept turning his face into Alex’s hand before remembering himself and barely holding back from biting or licking. They’d agreed that Alex wouldn’t be putting anything in his mouth, because the whole point was Michael being free to speak. He watched Alex with lidded, dark eyes as Alex moved his arms down one at a time, and took deep, slightly shaky breaths after asking Alex to draw circles on his palms and lines up his fingers.

Alex’s hands were starting to feel hypersensitive, like he could feel electrical currents under Michael’s skin. Every time Michael moaned or cursed or forgot himself and tried to press himself into Alex to get more skin contact, Alex’s dick throbbed. He’d always been good at ignoring his own body though, and it was easy to put his arousal to one side and focus entirely on Michael. 

Michael, starting to twitch and shift on the bed. Michael, turning his face against Alex’s wrist and groaning helplessly, mouth open and panting. Michael, golden skin and dark hair, thick strong thighs and soft stomach and rough stubble. His lips were bitten red and wet, his cock was leaking onto his stomach, and when Alex dragged his palm across his chest again he bit off a curse and said, “My nipple, fuck, Alex –”

“Mmhm.” Alex pressed his fingertips over it and Michael screwed his eyes shut, rubbing his face against Alex’s other wrist. 

“Pinch,” he gasped, and Alex smiled, so proud and pleased, feeling Michael’s pleasure like it was his own as he moved his hand so Michael’s nipple was between his index finger and thumb, barely pinching at all. Just holding, gently. Teasing a little. “Harder,” Michael breathed, and Alex obeyed. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Michael chanted under his breath. “ _Alex._ ”

“I’m right here,” Alex said, voice low. 

Michael took a couple of quick breaths. “Pull my hair? My head?”

Alex slid the hand he already had in Michael’s hair to the crown of his head and took a handful of curls, squeezing for a second before pulling his head back. Michael let out such a beautiful, broken sound that Alex almost felt it in his own throat. Michael was breathing fast, throat working for a second before he whispered, “Other hand. Play with my nipple.”

Fierce triumph sang through Alex’s body, as good as arousal. He tightened his grip in Michael’s hair without meaning to as he rolled his nipple between the thumb and index finger of his other hand, and Michael’s body shook, another helpless sound pulled out of him. “You’re so good,” Alex told him, not even meaning to. He’d been speaking as little as possible, but at his words Michael cried out and thrust up against nothing, and Alex’s cock throbbed in a way even he couldn’t ignore at the sight. “God, Michael,” he breathed. “You’re so good.”

“Please.” Michael’s voice was strained, eyelids fluttering. “Please, please, I need – touch me, Alex, please.”

“I am touching you.” Alex could feel his heart in his throat, everything in him pulled to Michael, magnetised and lit up.

Michael made a strangled sound of frustration, or maybe desperation. “ _Alex!_ Fuck, my dick, Alex, please.”

Alex let go of his nipple and dropped his hand to Michael’s cock immediately, pressing it down too lightly into the V of his hip. Michael made a sound almost like a sob. “Please, come on!”

“Okay.” Alex could see how overwhelmed he was, and for a second thought he saw a hint of wetness at the corner of one of Michael’s eyes. He put aside how hot that was for later consideration and wrapped his hand around Michael properly, but didn’t move his hand. “Better?”

“You’re such a dick,” Michael groaned, thrusting up in aborted little twitches. “Stroke me!”

Alex grinned and did, slow and light. He wanted Michael to keep speaking, wanted to hear how much rougher his voice could get. He wasn’t disappointed.

“Faster,” Michael breathed, and swallowed. “My, my hair – harder.”

“You got it,” Alex murmured, tightening his grip and pulling Michael’s head back a little further, drinking up his helpless moan.

“Oh fuck.” Michael dug his heels into the bed and tried to pull against Alex’s grip on his hair, making Alex hold him even tighter. “Ahhhh, fuck. Fa – ahhh – aster –”

So close. Alex’s pulse was racing, skin tight, and when Michael came with a gutted cry, Alex had to take deep breaths and hold back the urge to let go of Michael’s hair to finish himself off too. But that wouldn’t have been fair, so he kept his grip on Michael firm and stroked him through his climax until Michael whispered, “Stop.”

They were both still for a moment, just breathing. And then Michael swallowed and said, “You can...you can let go.” 

Alex loosened his grip slowly before pulling both his hands back. Michael curled to follow, rolling up onto his knees far faster than he should’ve done, given that he’d just come about five seconds ago, but Alex didn’t really have time to think about it. Michael was cupping him through his boxers and Alex gasped, grabbing hold of him for balance as he rocked into it without meaning to.

“Can I?” Michael asked, voice so deep, and Alex nodded. He gasped again when Michael didn’t wait, just slid his hand down his underwear and started jerking him right there, hard and fast. Alex didn’t even have time to string together any words – one frantic, stuttering moan and he was coming, all over Michael’s hand and his own boxers.

“Shit,” he breathed, dropping his forehead onto Michael’s shoulder. “Oh…okay. Wow.”

“That was fast,” Michael said, sounding almost admiring, and Alex laughed, suddenly so happy he hardly knew what to do with himself.

“You gave me a hell of a show, you can’t be that surprised.”

“You liked the show, huh?” Michael grinned, voice still rough around the edges, and Alex lifted his head to kiss him. It turned deep fast, the two of them holding onto each other tight for a minute before it eased up. Alex ran his tongue along Michael’s upper lip and smiled when Michael nipped at him.

“You seemed to like it too,” he murmured, and Michael laughed quietly.

“Yeah.”

Michael kissed him again, slower, cradling the back of his head and shifting closer so one of his knees was between Alex’s. His hands kept stroking over Alex’s bare legs, up the back of his shirt, into his hair, like he was trying to touch him as much as possible now he was allowed. Alex pressed into it and held him as close as he could, licking into his mouth and humming contentedly as Michael sucked for a second on his lower lip, both of them opening their eyes a fraction and smiling at each other.

Michael nuzzled their noses together, so tender it made Alex’s heart hurt no matter how many times it happened. He had to swallow before he could ask softly, “You wanna clean up?”

“Yeah.” Michael kissed the corner of his mouth and pulled away in increments, legs wobbling for a second when he stood up. Alex grinned but didn’t say anything, and gave Michael a softer smile when he passed him his crutch.

“Thanks.”

Alex had thought they might just use a washcloth, but Michael turned the shower on as soon as they were in the bathroom, so Alex balanced on one leg to push his boxers down past his hips and sat on the side of the tub to swing himself in after Michael, kicking his underwear away as he did. It was a practiced move by now, and he pulled himself up and around to sit on the bench, Michael stepping aside to make room for him automatically.

“So.” Alex looked up at him and smiled, familiar post-sex laziness creeping over him. “That went pretty well, from my side at least.”

“Was there anything you actually struggled with there?” Michael laughed.

“Yeah.” Alex ducked his head to get his hair under the spray, dragging his fingers through it. “Only touching you where you said, not going off-script.”

“Really?” Michael’s smile was heavy in his voice. “Man, you were like a statue.”

“I like that,” Alex admitted reaching up to grab his shampoo and squeezing a little into his palm. “I like feeling completely in control.” He often hadn’t, with Michael. Michael was one of the only people who could do that to him.

“Mmm.” Michael lathered up his own hair, white foam running down his body in soft-edged streaks. Alex reached out and slid his hand down Michael’s leg from his hip to his knee, just admiring.

“Was there anything you found difficult?” Alex asked, drawing his hand back and rubbing shampoo over his scalp.

Michael considered it. “Kinda went back and forth on it. Some things were easier to ask for than others, and I can’t see any pattern in it. I definitely felt like a pinned butterfly, but it wasn’t bad.”

“Wasn’t bad?” Alex repeated, amused, and Michael kicked his foot gently. 

“Yeah alright, it was kind of awesome. Really…exposed though.” He tipped his head back to rinse his hair out, the curls flattening under the water to trail slick and dark against his neck. “I definitely wanna do it to you now.”

“Ominous,” Alex said dryly.

“Nah, I just wanna see if you find it hard at all. Like, you say you’re no good at asking for stuff, but you are. You just take time to work up to it.”

Alex hummed and shifted forward to rinse his hair out. “I guess, yeah. Was there anything you didn’t like?”

“No.” When Alex looked up, Michael was rubbing conditioner through his hair with a thoughtful expression. 

“Nothing you would’ve done differently?” Alex pressed. “If we did it again, you’d want it to be exactly the same?”

“Maybe…more talking.” Michael sat down next to Alex on the bench, his skin hot where he touched Alex at the shoulder and thigh. “You barely said anything at all,” Michael went on, looking at his hands. “And I know that was kinda the point, but…”

“No, I know.” Alex bit his lip. “Changing things to make them better is good.” And speaking of. Alex turned to kiss Michael’s shoulder. “You liked it when I called you good.”

“Who doesn’t wanna be good?” Michael said, not exactly evasive, but not fully engaging either.

“Not everyone cares, I guess.” Alex kissed his shoulder again, and rested his chin on it. He could smell Michael’s conditioner, something coconutty that would fade almost immediately when he rinsed it out, overwhelmed by Michael’s own, far more pleasant, natural scent. Not that Alex was biased at all. “I like that you do.”

“Yeah?” A trace of humour slid back into Michael’s voice, and Alex sat up as he turned to look at him. “You like me being good for you?”

“Yes,” Alex said, for once not pausing to consider it or think it through. The bolt of heat that had gone through him at those words wasn’t something to mull over. He wanted to add qualifiers straight away, telling Michael that he didn’t mean it in a threatening way. For Alex, being good was being small and silent and conforming to the status quo. Being good meant folding himself away and being somebody else.

But it didn’t mean that for Michael, who was starting to smile, equal parts shy and pleased. “Yeah?”

“I just said so.” Alex smiled back at him and twisted to run his hand up Michael’s thigh, half under the hot spray of the shower. “Do you like being good for me?”

“Yeah.” Michael didn’t hesitate either, breathing it out with his eyes on Alex’s like nothing else in the world existed.

Alex could already see the ways it could go sour, could see unpleasant possibilities of Michael letting Alex do whatever he wanted at his own expense and Alex starting to expect things he wasn’t entitled to. But they could avoid that, he was sure. Between the two of them, they could navigate the minefield of their respective issues and make this work for them.

So he smiled and leaned in to kiss Michael softly, sighing into his mouth when Michael cupped his face and stroked his thumbs in symmetrical stripes along his cheekbones. “I love you,” he murmured. It still wasn’t always the easiest thing for him to say, but it was never easier than at moments like this, with Michael holding him safe and close with no room for any doubt.

Michael kissed his cheek and pressed their foreheads together for a moment. “I love you too,” he said in a low voice. 

Alex smiled, eyes closed, perfectly happy. “Rinse your hair,” he murmured as they straightened, opening their eyes at the same time. “We’ve still got half that spaghetti left; we can have that for dinner.”

“Ah, sweet.” Michael grinned and kissed his other cheek, pulling himself up with one of the grab bars.

Alex was already looking forward to it. It would be the perfect opportunity to ask Michael about the research he’d been doing, and see how he felt about like safewords and aftercare and other things, and whether he had any ideas of his own. Or rather, what ideas he had, since the question of whether he had any was probably a moot one.

Michael sluiced water down his body under Alex’s appreciative gaze, and after they’d both washed, pulled him carefully to his feet so they could share a kiss under the water before getting out to dry off and eat dinner together.


End file.
